Role Of A Lifetime
by Keketra
Summary: When Peter returns home with his family, all is not quite as it should be... oneshot


-1Role Of A Lifetime

**Disclaimer: I do not own Peter Pevensie, Helen Pevensie, Susan, Edmund or Lucy Pevensie, Narnia, or Aslan. They all belong to CS Lewis, and I claim nothing. Merely an overactive imagination. The title for this piece comes from the song 'Role of a Lifetime', from the musical 'Bare', which I'm not sure who wrote it. Another piece of genius, if I may say so.**

**Advice: If you can find the song 'Role of a Lifetime' anywhere, it's a nice song to listen to whilst reading this (but ignore the gay parts in the song, as they aren't really relevant to this!). Either that or 'Let me Fall' by Josh Groban, an amazing virtuoso singer.**

**Author's Note: I just read 'Mistaken Perception', by ohcEEcho. The idea for this one-shot came from that - if you read it (and you really should, because it's excellent!) you'll see what i mean. I suppose this is just a drabble, but it wasn't meant to be other 1,000 words! I hope you guys enjoy it.**

**Dedication: To my wonderful online friend who role-plays with me and plots evil Peter plots, MissEppieLoaf. Thank you so, so much for introducing me to the musical 'Bare' and the amazing song 'Role of A Lifetime!' You rock, girl.**

My name is Peter Pevensie. I am the first of four children, the first son of Adam, the second King to enter Narnia, High King of Narnia, Peter the Magnificent, Emperor of the Lone Islands, son of Helen and David Pevensie. Or at least I was all these things until I returned home, just last week. Or… rather, to Finchley… as I suppose Narnia is my - _was­ my home_. Am I confusing you? I haven't even started yet.

You could say that I have been having a somewhat confusion of mistaken identity.

I was fairly certain who I was, who I had been, you see, until I returned to Finchley. It was enough that home did not feel like home - when one has spent twenty seven Narnian years ruling in a shining Castle, they can hardly call a small spot in London _home_. I don't mean to sound patronising or at all snotty. Really, I don't. I just… well, it's as I said… I'm having problems sorting out who I am. Does that make sense? I'm not even sure anymore.

Would anyone care? I'm not sure of that either.

I suppose my certainty faltered when I… when mother came about and went to hug me. I stood in the door way, watching as my siblings hugged her first - that's the way it's always been, you see… siblings before myself. I can't help it. It's like… an imported part of myself, stamped on my heart and it made me happy to see them happy before me. And then, Helen Pevensie, my _mother_… she turned to me, and called me by my father's name.

I do not know why. No, no, I do. I look in the mirror and all I see is _him_. My father... Who I'm learning to hate. No, not hate. I do not know how to hate… I never have, not even Edmund.

Well, actually that's not true. There is one person, just one, who I have been able to hate, but I will not speak of her. I _cannot_ speak of her. Her very thought makes me angry, and I know it upsets my brother so and thus I do not speak of her, but keep my thoughts to myself, the way I've always done.

So why am I here, you ask? Why am I staring at a mirror, tracing that phantom image of myself? Am I vain? No… I do not think I am. I am searching for something, _anything_, which is mine and mine alone, for I can only see my father, David Peter Gerald Pevensie - for whom I was named after, if you'll care to notice his middle name. See, even my name is not my own. My middle name, if ever asked, is David.

In everything I am he. I wish it weren't so, for it creates an expectation that I cannot live up to. I cannot hold our mother in the darkness as she cries for what she has lost, and what is never to be found again. I cannot be the father that Lucy, Susan and Edmund long for so, even though I have tried, Aslan knows how I have tried, since our father, _David_, went away to war.

When father went, I did not cry for the same reasons that he did. I did not cry for the knowledge that everyone except he and i seemed to share (and i hated that we shared it) - the knowledge that I would not see him again, not for a very long time, and that if I… if he _did _live through this, then the old 'dad' would not return, at least. No, it would be a sadder man, a more bereft man which entered in his stride. I understood that even before I suffered at the hands of war in Narnia.

I knew that, and he knew that I knew. But it didn't make it easier. But that was not what I cried for. I cried for the promise I had made, regrettably, uneasily, knowing I could never, _never_, fill the shoes my father , my hero, had left behind for me to place my own inexperienced feet within. Father told me that when he left i would have to be the 'man of the house'. In other words, though he hesitated to say it, knowing the feelings it would evoke in each of us, I would have to replace him. I did not tell him that i thought that that would be impossible. I did not have to. You see, he could always tell with each of us what we were thinking, even me. And he knew what I was thinking that day, though i had wished he wouldn't.

My prayers had never been answered before. They certainly weren't then either. He told me that he knew I would do my best - that I would be the strength he left us without. Unknowingly he placed more burden on my shoulders than he could ever dream of doing.

So I cried, I cried because I could not, would _never_ be able to fill his expectations, although I tried, oh, how I tried.

And I guess it worked for now mother called me by his name. When at first I did not answer, she simply stared at me, demanded for me to hold her, which I shakily did. I felt the stare of my siblings as i tried to fill my father's place, as he'd once asked for me to do. I hoped that this would be it - for my hug seemed false… so false.

And then she asked me to kiss her - and i froze. For a split second the world span with great force, I found myself backing off, running without a word.

So now i stand in front of this mirror, searching desperately for some sign of myself. And yet... How ever much I try to deny it, whispering denial to the reflection of my father, I am nothing of me and everything of him.

I was asked by my father to play his part. Now even my mother is taken in. Tell me, reader, is this not the role of a lifetime?

**Author's Note: This will most definitely be a one-shot. I hope you liked it, but you never know, so please, please review! **


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